ity and courage which stamped him as a
soldier of the first grade. A major-general of volunteers and a brevet
major-general in the regular army, the year 1868 found him a colonel of
infantry commanding the military district of Owyhee, a section of the
country which included the southeastern part of Oregon and the
northeastern part of California.

In the adaptation of means to ends, so far as Indian affairs are
concerned, the United States has usually been woefully lacking. With a
few companies of cavalry and infantry not aggregating a full regiment,
this eminent soldier was directed to hold the various scattered
garrison points throughout a large extent of territory, and also to
settle the Indians, who for some time had been indulging their
propensities for savage slaughter almost unchecked, save for a few
sporadic and ineffective efforts by volunteers and irregulars.

The far western representatives of the great {302} Shoshone nation are
among the meanest, most degraded, most despicable Indians on the
continent. This did not hinder them from being among the most brutal
and ferocious. They made the tenure of life and property more than
precarious in that far-off section during and after the Civil War.
They were not very numerous, nor were they a great race of fighters,
except when cornered. The character of the country to the eastward of
their ravaging ground, abounding in lava beds, desolate plains,
inaccessible valleys and impassable mountain ranges, to which they
could fly when they were hard pressed, rendered it difficult to bring
any considerable number of them to action, and they enjoyed a certain
immunity from punishment on that account.

The most important engagement between them and the troops, before the
patience and perseverance of Crook and his handful, finally wore out
the Indians, presents, perhaps, the one instance where they were
brought fairly to bay and the soldiers had an opportunity to give them
a thorough beating. This unique battle demonstrated also how
desperately even a coward will fight when his back is against a wall.
And it showed, as few other frontier fights have shown, the splendid
courage of the regular American soldier in this arduous, unheeded
service.

Early on the 26th of September, 1868, General Crook, with a small troop
of cavalry, H of the First, numbering less than thirty men, together
with about a score of mounted infantrymen from the Twenty-third
Regiment, and perhaps